For the first Show & Fail, our speaker couldn’t make it. I was in the middle of a trip, with 30-plus people expecting a session.
So I pulled over on the side of the road in Savannah, joined the call, and demoed a build anyway.
A roadside software demonstration was not the original plan.
It was rough, rocky, imperfect, but done. I hope everyone who attended left feeling encouraged, too. If you’ve ever run a demo in front of an audience, you probably already know some version of this story.
Everything works until you share your screen. Suddenly, the button has other plans.
That’s Why We Show Up
That first session captured exactly why I created Show & Fail for our Atlanta GRC Engineering Chapter. I wanted a place where we could share what we’re building without pretending the whole process was smooth.
A working project is worth celebrating. So is finally understanding why something broke. The decision you changed, the feature you abandoned, and the question you were embarrassed to ask can be useful to somebody else.
When we only share the finished version, beginners miss how much figuring things out went into it. They see somebody else’s polished result and compare it with their own confusing afternoon.
I’d rather we let each other see more of the process.
And if a demo goes off the rails, we can embrace the moment. Tell us what you expected and what happened instead. Somebody may recognize the problem. The rest of us get to learn alongside you.
Bring What You Broke
Bring a tool, a workflow, an experiment, or an unfinished prototype. Bring a win, too. You don’t have to bring anything, complete a project, or manufacture a disaster to participate.
If you need help getting started, the GRC Vibe Coder’s Playbook walks through planning, building, and reviewing projects with AI. The Recipe Book helps you choose tools for what you want to build.
Then come tell us how it went.
Progress ain’t always pretty. Keep building anyway.